Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
“ColorLover”
“ColorLover,” a short film by artist Rus Khasanov, is a delightful liquid rainbow. The video’s ingredients seem to be ink, paint, oil, and a bit of superhydrophobic coating primed to reveal a heart. I love that latter touch; it’s a cool way to use regular materials in a way that some might assume involved digital…
Explaining the Roaming Rocks
For nearly a century, the long meandering tracks etched into Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa remained a mystery. Clearly, some force was pushing the heavy rocks there and leaving behind these grooves. But with the remoteness of the location, it took investigators years to catch the rocks in action and solve the puzzle. For those who…
Making Yeast-Free Pizza
Yeast is a key ingredient in many pizza doughs; as the yeast ferment sugars in the dough, they produce carbon dioxide which bubbles into the dough, creating the light and airy texture necessary for a good crust. It’s a slow process, though, often requiring several hours for the dough to rise. Recently, researchers studied an…
Teaching Diffusion With Eggs
Many cultures around the world marinate hard-boiled eggs — like pickled eggs in Europe or tea- and soy-infused eggs from Asia. These delicacies offer a fun (and tasty) way to demonstrate the concept of diffusion, the tendency of a substance to move from areas of high concentration to low concentration via random molecular motion. Simply…
Dispelling Ice
In winter weather, delays pile up at airports when planes need de-icing. Our current process involves spraying thousands of gallons of chemicals on planes, but these chemicals are easily removed by shear stress and dissolution, meaning that by the time a plane takes off, there is little to no de-icing agent remaining on the plane.…
“Reverent”
Today, enjoy this moody black-and-white short film of storm timelapses. Photographer Mike Olbinski is a master of this subject. I never tire of watching his towering convective supercell thunderstorms or his picturesque microbursts. The lightning-lit clouds in the latter half of the film are particularly spectacular (assuming you do not have sensitivities to flashing lights).…
Fast Fractal Fingers
With the right balance of viscosity and surface tension, many fluid combinations can form fractal or dendritic patterns. Here, researchers use a drop of food coloring atop a mixture of water and xanthan gum. Depending on the concentration of gum (and the age of the viscous fluid) different fractal patterns spread quickly across the surface.…
Surf’s Up!
Inspired by honeybees and their ability to surf on capillary waves of their own making, researchers have developed SurferBot, a low-cost, untethered, vibration-driven surf robot. Built on a simple 3D-printed platform, the bot has a vibration motor powered by a simple coin cell battery. As the motor vibrates, it propels the bot forward (Image 2).…
Within the Bubble’s Pop
To our eyes, a soap bubble appears to pop instantly, but when observed in high-speed video, the process is far more complex. In this video, the Slow Mo Guys pop human-sized bubbles, giving us an opportunity to appreciate the rupture process at speeds up to 50,000 frames per second. Once the rupture starts, the hole…
Mixing the Immiscible
Immiscible liquids — like oil and water — do not combine easily. Typically, with enough effort, you can create an emulsion — a mixture formed from droplets of one liquid suspended in the other — like the one above. But a team of researchers have taken mixing immiscible liquids to a new level using their…